If you work on the mainframe using z/OS and haven't heard of RESTful APIs, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. Seriously, even though RESTful APIs are still a fairly new thing, they're already essential. If you don't know about them, ask the people on the distributed side of your business -- who I can assure you already rely upon them -- to help bring you up to speed.

The simplest way to explain RESTful APIs is to tell you what they can do. Imagine a newbie developer with no z/OS experience enabling some mainframe assembler programs that provide browser-based access to data. I'd imagine this but I don't have to, because I've seen it with my own eyes. And the young developer learned this in a day.

Once you've done some research, getting started is easy. Establish a proof-of-concept team; two people should be sufficient. The first person should be from the distributed side and know how to code and develop RESTful APIs. The second team member should possess standard z/OS skills. Together, that's all the capability needed to create a RESTful API solution in a matter of days. And you won't need to move the data or the application off of z/OS, either. Get ready to be shocked.

Taking advantage of modern development methods is that easy. So please, give this a try.

IBM Systems Magazine is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. The editorial content of IBM Systems Magazine is placed on this website by MSP TechMedia under license from International Business Machines Corporation.